A standard history of Kansas and Kansans, Volume I, Part 9

Author: Connelley, William Elsey, 1855-1930. cn
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis
Number of Pages: 668


USA > Kansas > A standard history of Kansas and Kansans, Volume I > Part 9


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When we come to drive down a stake and say-"To this point came Coronado"-we find it quite impossible. The information which would enable ns to do this does not exist. Writers find themselves unable to agree when it comes to fixing these definite locations. They usually develop some theory of locations and routes, then try to prove that they are right. The indefinite authorities which we possess encourage this sort of writing. Here are some of the locations of Quivira :-


Bandalier plaees Quivira in Northeastern Kansas.


L. B. Prinee says Quivira was on the Missouri above Kansas City and below Omaha.


General J. H. Simpson located Quivira on the Kansas-Nebraska line some distance back from the Missouri.


Hubert Howe Baneroft is of the opinion that Quivira was in Kan- sas somewhere between the Arkansas and the Missouri.


3 Read chapters XIX and XX Voyages, Relations et Memoires Orig- inaux Pour Servir a L'Historie de la Decouverte De L' Amerique. Rela- tion Du Voyage de Cibola, entrepis en 1540. Paris, 1838. And see also the Spanish texts and translations on this point, Vol. XIV, Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology.


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IIaynes thinks Coronado crossed Kansas and reached the Platte.


Winship's judgment is that Quivira was the country about the con- vergenee of the main branches of the Kansas River.


Hodge marks Quivira as extending from the Arkansas, near Great Bend, to the Republican, which stream he makes the east boundary of the country of the Pawnees.


Mr. Twitchell, in his Leading Facts of New Mexican History, copies the map of Mr. Hodge.


Dellenbaugh maps Quivira as embracing Southeastern Kansas and adjacent regions.


Houek in his history of Missouri makes a strong case for his state, insisting that the mountain ranges which rose to view on the march are the Ozarks, and that these were skirted by Coronado as he passed into Southwest Missouri.


Basket, Richey, and Dunbar agree with Winship.


Other writers insist on still other locations. There is evidence for each of these locations, and by very ingenious reasoning probability is found for most of them.


On one point writers practically agree-Quivira was in what is now Kansas. That may be taken as settled beyond question. This old Indian Country may have lapped over and spread its bounds into Nebraska or Missouri or Oklahoma, but it was mainly on the Kansas plains that it was certainly seated. The Spaniards sent other expeditions to Quivira, among them one under Onate in 1601. Some portion of the route of this trip was mapped. That this expedition found Quivira villages on the Arkansas near the present city of Wichita, there is scarcely any doubt.


If we are to believe Gregg and other Santa Fe traders when they tell of the terrible sufferings for water endured by the first parties who attempted to use the "cut off," or shorter route from the Arkansas by way of the Cimarron, we can not think it possible that Coronado marched "by the needle" from ('entral Texas, or any point in Texas. to the Arkansas west of the great north bend in June and July. And from Qui- vira, mountains could be seen to the east. This is asserted by the old chroniclers. Most modern writers ignore this fact.


If the line of march from Central Texas, or North-central Texas, was "northward" as some of the old records have it-and that would pass through a country of grass and water in midsummer -- it would strike the Arkansas River thirty leagues below the Quivira towns, though these distanees are always uncertain. Thirty leagues may have been really but ten or twenty leagues, and perhaps sixty or ninety leagues. No dependence can be put on these statements of distances. That it was the Arkansas River which was thus reached must be the meaning of the Relation del Suceso. Here is the language :


"After he had proceeded many days by the needle" [here the editor has inserted "i. e., to the north." Even with the editor's doctoring, the text does not say the mareh was due north] "we found the river Quivira, which is 30 leagues below the settlement. While going up the


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valley, we found people who were going hunting, who were natives of Quivira."


The river was called Quivira River, and must be the same named St. Peter and St. Paul by others, that is, the Arkansas. A fair inter- pretation of the language would be that Coronado struck the Arkansas thirty leagues below the Quivira towns. For they immediately started up the valley, not down the valley, as they must have gone had they crossed at the west turn of the great bend. While going up the Quivira River to the Quivira settlement they came upon the people, native Qui- virans, who were there hunting the buffalo. The point where Coronado came to the Quivira River may have been at any point from the mouth of the Grand or Neosho to the mouth of the Walnut. Up the Arkansas from these regions, Quivira villages were found in 1601. They were near where Wichita now stands, and they may have extended eastward across the country to the Walnut. The only evidence except the phrase "by the needle" to support the direct north-and-south march is that the river (St. Peter and St. Paul) turned northeast below the crossing.


To locate Quivira as it surely lay in Coronado's day there must be mountains on its eastern border-mountains, not hills nor river-bluff's. And for this range we can depend only on the Ozarks. Castaneda says :


"Quivira is . . . . in the midst of the country somewhat near the mountains toward the sea. For the country is level as far as Quivira. and there they began to see some mountain chains."


The waters of the Atlantic, including the Gulf of Mexico, were at that time known as the North Sea, and these mountains were toward that sea. The hills in Butler, Elk and Chautauqua counties in Kansas, and their continuation in the present Osage country in Oklahoma, are the outlying flanking hills of the Ozarks to the west. They must be the first hills or the beginnings of "some mountain chains" which Coronado and his company saw. It is possible that Castaneda supposed the Ozarks to be the Appa -. lachian Mountains along the Atlantic seaboard, when he said "near the mountains toward the sea."


On the west Quivira, was never set in bounds. It ran over the Great Plains, but to what extent it embraced them there is nothing to tell. It may be asserted that the Arkansas River was its south boundary. And the country whose waters drain into the river from the north-down to the mouth of the Neosho or Grand-was most likely the ancient Qui- vira. And it may have included the prairie lands of Southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas. When all the accounts are considered this location of the mystic and half-mythical old land appears most prob- able. The preponderance of evidence is in favor of it. But this location -nor any other-can be established beyond controversy. It is one of those unfortunate historical matters not capable of complete and satis- factory settlement. The only definite thing about it is that it was in Kansas. It has persisted through all vicissitudes to attach and cling to Kansas. For years it drifted about. It was located even in Alaska. It haunted the Pacific Coast. It adorned maps of the mountains "where


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rolls the Oregon." It was seized as a name for a squalid pueblo village far down the Rio Grande. But these vagaries have vanished. Kansas is Quivira and Quivira is Kansas.


It has been determined perhaps beyond all question that the Quiverans were of the Caddoan linguistic stoek of North American Indians. From the aeeount of the houses found by Coronado in Quivira it has been determined that the Quivirans were the Indians known in modern times as the Wiehitas. They lived along the Arkansas and there is no evidence that they ever did live on or along the Kansas River.


We know that the Pawnces lived on the Big Blue River. One of their oldest villages was on the site of the present Blue Springs, in Gage County, Nebraska. In Coronado's time they ranged ahnost to the Missouri. Du Tisne found them on the Neosho in 1719. And we may well believe they roamed to the western limits of the buffalo plains. The Kansas did not aseend the Kansas River at all until long after Coronado's day. The theorists make the Pawnees the inhabitants of Harahey, a coun- try to the north of Quivira. This may have been the case, for the Wieh- itas and Pawnees are both of the Caddoan family. That there was any rigidly defined line between their countries and hunting grounds is not probable.4 And Quivira may have embraced all the country of the Pawnees, as well as that of the Wichitas. For the Caddoan people seem to have oceupied the country both north and south of the Arkansas River to the line beyond the Platte. Toward the Missouri their bounds may be defined by an irregular line from near the Mississippi and the Missouri to the Loup Country in Nebraska, should the location of Quivira as proposed in this study prove correct. But it is not to be supposed that this country was all oceupied at the same time. These people occupied their country just as all Indian tribes did their domains. They lived in groups of huts along some stream and elaimed a vast surrounding hunt- ing-ground. Sometimes their elaims were undisputed, but they were usually contested. Their squalid villages were always temporary, and they were moved for the most trivial eauses.


Coronado spent several weeks in the exploration of Quivira. He says he reached the fortieth parallel, now the line between Kansas and Nebraska. There is no reason to question this elaim. He noted the fertility of the soil and deserihed some of the produets of the country. When he was ready to return, native Quivirans-Wiehita or Pawnee Indians-told him how to get back to New Mexico. They may have shown him the way. It was probably that ancient path known as the Old Santa Fe Trail, as has already been stated, but not as it was most used in later days. Water could not have been found on that route in the season of his departure. Ile must have gone up the Arkansas to the


According to Jaramillo, Quivira and Harahey formed one country and one government,-and had a single ruler or chief. "The general wrote a letter here to the governor of Harahey and Quivira, ete." And in the same paragraph-"'The general sent to summon the lord of those parts and other Indians who they said resided in Harahey, and he came with about 200 men."


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point where the trail was crossed by the great trading road which skirted the front range of the Rocky Mountains. This crossing was where Bent's Fort was afterward erected. From that point the descent to the Rio Grande could be safely made at any time of the year.


Another student, and a very thorough one, finds it impossible to accept the conclusions of the majority of writers on this subject. Rev. Michael A. Shine, Plattsmouth, Nebraska, has made an exhaustive study of the available authorities. The results of his investigations are to be found in his pamphlet, The Lost Province of Quivira, published in 1916. A good summary of it is contained in his letter to the author, dated May 3, 1916, from which the following quotation is made :-


The march outward of the Army was 150 leagues or 395 miles from Tiguex on the Rio Grande-i. e., 25 leagues to Pecos, 15 leagues to the Bridge over Gallinas River, 40 leagues to Querechos Settlements and 20 leagues to the Buffalo Ravine or Mustang Creek in Texas-total 100 leagues, then southeast to Red River where the 101st Meridian crosses it. 50 leagues from here the army returned home-68 leagues to Ft. Sumner on the Pecos River-32 leagues from there to the Bridge and 40 leagues from the Bridge to Tiguex-Total, 142 leagues or 8 leagues less than the outward march. (A league = 2.63 miles.)


From the Red River Coronado went straight north on the 101st Meridian-180 leagues, which brought him to the Platte River, which is just 175 leagues or 460 miles. This allows 5 leagues or 13 miles for detours and deviations in the journey north. The Platte is St. Peter & St. Paul's River.


From the crossing of the Platte at the 101st Meridian going north- east 16 days or 72 leagues or 190 miles would bring them to the junction of Beaver Creek with the Loup River- in the vicinity of the present city of Geneva. This was always, even in ancient times, the home of the Skidi or Pawnee Loups. Quivira is the Spanish pronunciation of the name of these people-Skidi-ra-or Wolf people, like Harahey-Arache and Tareque-Ariki-ra, or Horn People, who lived then between the Elkhorn and Missouri Rivers.


Coronado returned to the Platte Crossing and then went southwest to the junction of the Purgatoire river with the Arkansas in Colorado- from there still southwest to the 1st Querechos village-where they were led astray and then back on his original trace to the Bridge, etc. No astronomical observation was taken for the Latitude-it was computed as follows : 180 leagues north-over 6 degrees of latitude. (26 leagues in a degree.) They went south over 30 leagues-below the Bridge or Tiguex (the 36th degree), hence they went into the 34th degree-then north over 6 degrees brought them into the 40th degree as Coronado states.


Now the real latitude of Tiguex is the 35th degree-hence going north over 6 degrees brought them into the 41st degree-which is where I have located Quivira, and exactly where they found it.


This is a further confirmation of the position that there is not suffi- cient evidence in the records at hand to place the location of Quivira within exact bounds, or beyond controversy.


That Father Shine has discovered and fixed the origin of the name Quivira is possible. That the Skidi Pawnees lived above the Platte in 1541, however, is not established. They may have lived there then. But it is probable that they lived on the Arkansas at that time.


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FRAY PADILLA


The return of Padilla to Quivira may be considered a consequence of Coronado's march to the Great Plains. For he and three other Francis- eans had been on that famous primal exploration. And it is to be regret- ted that it can not be recorded that they, or any of them raised voice or offered protest at the murder of the Turk. Let us hope the record is sadly incomplete.


This priest is usually spoken of as Fray Juan Padilla, and it is said that he was a native of Andalusia. ITe remained on the Rio Grande when Coronado returned to Mexico. And Fray Juan de la Cruz, a Portuguese soldier of fortune named Andres del Campo, a negro, and a half-blood negro named Louis and Sebastian respectively, and some Indians from New Spain stopped with Fray Padilla at the pueblos on the Rio Grande. In the summer of 1542 Padilla prepared to return to Quivira as a missionary to that country. Some of his company went with him, and all may have gone. The journey was made in the fall of 1542. By some accounts, they went on foot, and by others there was at least one horse taken along by them. It is reasonable to suppose that the route used by Coronado in coming out of the land was followed by Padilla and his company going in.


What Padilla accomplished in Quivira remains hidden. Some say he immediately sought the eross set up there by Coronado, and that he found the grounds about it swept and cleansed. This service had been rendered by the Indians, who doubtless regarded it as an occult object to be propitiated. It is not to be supposed that Padilla accomplished mueh in the work of Christianizing the Quiviras, for they murdered him shortly after his arrival. Indeed it is not certain but that they met and murdered him as he entered their towns. Others say that after a short sojourn with the Quiviraus he set out for the country of the Guaes. These Guaes are set down as the enemies of the Quivirans, who could not under- stand how any good man could leave them to dwell with their foes. It is not improbable that they attributed traitorons designs to the good father. In any event, he lost his life trying to reach a new tribe. One account has it that he was much beloved by the Quivirans, and he left their vil- lages against their wishes, but attended by a small company. This chroni- eler says that the band had proceeded more than a day's journey when a war-party was encountered, and this company of warriors murdered Padilla.


What the old writers say of Padilla is here set out, for it may be affirmed that he was the first Christian martyr in what is now the United States. Castaneda says :--


A friar named Juan Padilla remained in this province together with a Spanish-Portuguese and a negro and a half-blood and some Indians from the province of Capothan, in New Spain. They killed the friar because he wanted to go to the province of the Guaes, who were their enemies. The Spaniard escaped by taking flight on a mare, and after- wards reached New Spain, coming out by the way of Panuco. The


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Indians from New Spain who accompanied the friar were allowed by the murderers to bury him, and they followed the Spaniard and overtook him. This Spaniard was a Portuguese named Campo.


It would appear from the foregoing that Padilla did not return to the Rio Grande with Coronado, but remained in Quivira when his eom- mander left the plains. There is more detail in this account-


He reached Quivira and prostrated himself at the foot of the eross, which he found in the same place where he had set it up; and all around it clean, as he had charged them to keep it, which rejoiced him, and then he began the duties of a teacher and apostle of that people; and finding them teachable and well disposed, his heart burned within him, and it seemed to him that the number of souls of that village was but a small offering to God, and he sought to enlarge the bosom of our mother, the Holy Church, that she might receive all those he was told were to be found at greater distances. He left Quivira, attended by a small company, against the will of the village Indians, who loved him as their father.


At more than a day's journey the Indians met him on the warpath, and knowing the evil intent of those barbarians, he asked the Portuguese that as he was on horseback he should flee and take under his protection the Oblates and the lads who could thus run away and escape. And the blessed father, kneeling down, offered up his life, which he had sacrificed for the winning of souls to God, attaining the ardent longings of his soul, the felicity of being killed by the arrows of those barbarous Indians, who threw him into a pit, covering his body with innumerable stones. It is said that the Indians had gone out to murder the blessed father in order to steal the ornaments, and it was remembered that at his death were seen great prodigies, as it were the earth flooded, globes of fire, comets and obscuration of the sun.


The second paragraph of the foregoing quotation must have been written from the imagination purely. There was no white witness to the murder of the friar except possibly the Portuguese and the atten- dants. They are said to have observed it from a hill. It is not safe to depend on such testimony. They were fleeing for life. It is doubtful if they turned to look baek while in view of the Indians. In truth, they might have themselves murdered Padilla. The account contains no suffi- cient motive for his murder by the Indians. The assertion that they committed the murder to secure his ornaments ean not be taken seriously. And the asseveration that the earth was convulsed, comets seen, and the sun obscured, discredits the entire account. There is still another Spanish version, quoted by Davis in his work on New Mexico, as follows :---


When Coronado returned to Mexico he left behind among the Indians of Cibola, the father fray Francisco Juan de Padilla, the father fray Inan de la Cruz, and a Portuguese named Andres del Campo. Soon after the Spaniards departed, Padilla and the Portuguese set off in search of the country of the Grand Quivira. where the former understood there were innumerable souls to be saved. After traveling many days they reached a large settlement in the Quivira country. The Indians rame out to receive them in battle array, when the friar, knowing their intentions, toll the Portuguese and his attendants to take flight, while he would await their coming. in order that they might vent their fury on him as they ran. The former took flight, and plaeing themselves on a


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height within view, saw what happened to the friar. Padilla awaited their coming upon his knees, and when they arrived where he was, they immediately put him to death. . The Portuguese and his at- tendants made their escape, and ultimately arrived safely in Mexico, where he told what had oeeurred.


If this version of the effort of Padilla to found a mission in Quivira is correct, he was slain before he had entered the Indian town. The heavens were not rent, nor was the moon turned to blood. There is no mention of a eross, and the inferenee is that the priest had reached a new town-had found a village of which he had not heard before.


It is with Padilla as with the other Spaniards connected with the Coronado expedition. There is little that ean be asserted with confidenee. The evidence is fragmentary, contradictory, and incomplete. No certain thing ean be founded on it.


The effort to have it appear that a certain monument ereeted of stones more or less regularly set together near the present Council Grove was erected by the Indians as a monument to Padilla cannot be sustained. That monument was probably set up as a guide-post at the opening of the Santa Fe Trail by the Missourians. General James H. Lane marked the underground railroad from Topeka to Nebraska City in 1856 with exactly such monuments as that to be seen at Couneil Grove. After the (liscontinuance of the Lane Trail these monuments were called "Lane's Chimneys." There were some of them still standing in Richardson County, Nebraska, in 1890. Their purpose had been forgotten with new generations, and their origin was attributed to the Indians. And there is not the slightest evidence that Padilla was ever in the Council-Grove regions. Ile may have been there, but there is no record to establish that historical faet.


HUMANA


The Coronado expedition gave the Spaniards the first claim, the prior right and title to the Great Plains. The discovery, together with the exploration of the country by De Soto, should have given the great interior valley in the heart of the continent to Spain. This it would have słone had that country shown energy and persistencey in its conquest and settlement. But the unusual success of Cortez and Pizarro had over- wrought the Spanish common mind. Countries holding only possibilities of trade and agriculture were not at that time considered worth mueh, and they received little attention. The adventurers were seeking coun- tries full of gold and silver. It was their intention to seize those com- modities at all hazards, even though the lands so ravaged were utterly destroyed. The Great Plains, those "sandy heaths" covered with wild cattle and inhabited by naked savages, did not appeal to the average Spaniard. He was often ruthless and eruel in his conduct toward the Indians in such countries as he finally settled, sometimes perpetrating more atrocious murders than the savages were guilty of, as witness the action of Coronado when he burned the people of the pueblos at the stake. V~1 1-2


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In the occupation of the country north of Mexico the priests stopped in the dead and desolate pueblos along the Rio Grande. A few Spaniards -Mexicans-came with them. The burdens imposed on the miserable Indians of the filthy pueblos were unbearable, and they were goaded into desperation. They rose and slew to the utmost. This civilization brought into the valley of the Rio Grande, nearly as barbarous as that which it sought to displace, was thrown back whence it came. It was some years before another attempt to colonize that country was made.


For many years the feeble and desultory efforts at exploration only reflected the weakness of the Spanish in New Mexico. The discoveries made by Coronado could not be continued. A few journeys were made to the plains, but they constantly diminished in strength and purpose. They were finally abandoned altogether. An empire of vast possibilities was practically forgotten in the interest of goats and burros on the deserts of New Mexico.


The first of the futile efforts to follow the grand march of Coronado was a filibustering expedition led from Nuevo Viscaya by Francisco Leyva de Bonilla and Antonio Gutierrez de Humana, in 1594. It is claimed that it was unauthorized. Bonilla was the leader. He lingered about the old pueblos a year, with Bove, the St. Ildefonso of later times, as his headquarters. Then he began his movement to the northeastward. He is said to have passed through Pecos and another pueblo, but he did not follow the route of Coronado, though it is believed he ultimately reached the same destination. A vagabond and wandering course was pursued to the eastward, many streams crossed, and large herds of buffalo encountered. Far out on the plains, Bonilla turned to the north. He probably entered Kansas somewhere about the town of Kiowa, and crossed the Arkansas in the vicinity of Wichita. There he found, no doubt, the Quivira villages visited by Coronado. About these towns there were extensive fields of corn. Three days beyond them to the north on the road which led Coronado to the Nebraska border he was murdered by Humana, who usurped command of the filibusteros. On that day a buffalo herd was seen which seemed to cover all the plains. After this the herds were not so large, and on the tenth day out from the Quivira towns on the Arkansas, a river was reached which was a quarter of a league wide, as remembered by the man who described the journey. It was possibly the Platte. There six Indians deserted and started back to New Mexico. Jusephe, one of the deserters, seems to have finally es- caped, though he was captured by the Apaches, who kept him a year. The other deserters were lost or killed.




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